Engine Failures

I have strong feelings about engine failures. I've been close to engine failures many times from various perspectives. I've spoken to pilots on the radio who were experiencing them, I've known pilots who have dealt with them, and read many, many stories about those who have dealt with them. My own flight instructor taught me very early on to be paranoid about engine operation. He had dealt with enough engine problems that he felt it very important to impress upon a student just how critical an engine is to flight. He taught me to continuously fly the plane, look for traffic, and look for potential places to land as part of any routine flight. To this day, I hope I'll be prepared when it happens, and I still look for places every few minutes while in the air. And if it does happen, I just hope I have been practicing well in searching for fields of adequate length and smoothness to make my chances of walking away as high as they can be. But then, I have to make the field I choose, first...